2012 Financial Review

Where We’ve Been…2012

It’s been another year of growth and truly coming into our own as an organization. Our two centers in Los Angeles and Santa Monica are thriving and we’ve laid plans for opening a new center in San Francisco. We have grown financially in 2012, but our operations ended the year simply breaking even. Considering the slow economic recovery, however, we find this extremely heartening and are proud that once again we were able to make the teachings of the Buddha available to anyone who wished to receive them. No one was turned away from our regular classes or programs because of lack of funds.

We continued to add more programming and classes and were honored to host visiting teachers such as Roshi Joan Halifax, Phillip Moffitt, Kevin Griffin, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Amma Thanasanti and Shinzen Young among others. One of our main goals each year is to engage the community and build sangha. We’ve created a robust volunteer force that has helped us with our growth and extended our capacity for providing programs and classes. Our Insight On The Inside program continues to link practitioners with prisoners interested in corresponding with someone on the outside. Towards the end of the year we formed Social and Fundraising committees to strengthen these two important areas as we move into 2013. We upgraded our podcast feature on the website and launched a YouTube channel to allow our talks to reach the widest audience possible. Finally, we are filled with gratitude to you, our sangha, for supporting us because none of this would be possible without your help in the myriad ways you show it. We thank you.

The details:

18 weekly classes or sitting groups in three locations

22 special class series and daylongs

153 received scholarship support (17% of all attendees)

19 dana-only classes and events

1342 attended all special series and daylongs

We added a Young People’s group and a regular 5 Rhythms Dance Class

Over 1,800 people per month came through the doors to attend regular classes

We added a Memorial Day retreat, hosted our Fourth Joshua Tree Fall retreat and our second Earthdance East Coast retreat. (13% of 208 total retreat attendees received scholarship support)

Where We’re Going…2013

We turn five in 2013 and it promises to be another year of growth. The center in San Francisco will become a reality with Enrique Collazo on board as the manager. We now have a center in Nashville, TN as well thanks to the hard work of Dave Smith who is in Teacher Training with Noah and Vinny. We hired Shannon Fowler as a Fundraiser/Development coordinator to help us grow our revenues which will enable us to offer more programs and fund more scholarships.

As with last year, our focus remains on three specific areas

Programs: Continue to expand and meet the needs of the community

Our calendar is robust and we will continue to feature our local teachers and invite teachers from outside the area to offer class series, daylongs, and other events. We hope to make the dharma more available to families and we will continue to expand our programming to meet the needs of the community. This year, we will offer our three retreats and continue to look for ways to have more. Facilitator Training is on the schedule along with the next cohort of Teacher Training with Noah and Vinny. Our podcasts continue and we plan to expand our YouTube channel with more taped dharma talks.

People: Grow and support our community, both locally and virtually

We would not exist without our sangha and we aim to provide as many ways to get together as possible. We have planned fun events such as movie and game nights. We’re also committed so social engagement and hope to be of service to our community in even more ways as a sangha. This includes volunteering at food banks or being of service in other ways. So many of our community are already involved helping others and we support the growth of energy and engagement in the sangha. We’re also committed to helping our virtual sangha connect more and more, both through social media and in other ways.

As we continue to grow, we need your volunteer support more than ever. If you’d like to be a part of the community, let us know.

Finances: As a non-profit, finances will remain our most challenging area.
2013 will be a year of continued growth and expansion and we are putting a focused effort in finding the means to support our programs and continue to make the teachings of the Buddha available to everyone who is interested. We thank you in advance for your constant support and help in keeping the doors open.